Anne Imhof: DEAL

January 31–March 9, 2015

Working across a variety of media, Anne Imhof (German, b. 1978) evokes the power structures, secret codes, and unspoken rules that underlie daily human interaction. Her most recent project tackles the question, What constitutes a deal?

The artist has researched a variety of physical transactions, both formal and informal, and legal and illegal. She presents these interactions as an evolving body of work consisting of two main parts, this exhibition and a durational performance. The performance initially took place on January 17th and 18th, 2015 at MoMA PS1, involving nine performers who enacted abstracted movements that slowly unfolded along a horizontal line, continuously repeating over the course of each day.

The exhibition extends the formal questions and social concerns of the performance into the gallery space. A concrete basin in the gallery is filled with buttermilk, which served as a “currency” during the performance. A video expands upon the figures and movements of the live event. A wall-spanning painting with text fragments alludes to the “horizontal relationship,” as Imhof terms it, between parties entering into a deal. Four etchings on large aluminum panels reveal traces of bodily movements similar to those enacted during the weekly repeating performance of SOTSB for DEAL, a reduced variation of the initial performance.

Imhof emphatically rejects conventional distinctions between a live event, its documentation, and related objects. For her, all components of DEAL are equally important, each providing a different angle on her subjects. Together they contribute to a multi-faceted visual image in perpetual process, highly precarious, and always on the verge of falling apart.

Performances of SOTSB for DEAL occur every Sunday, 12-6 PM.

In conjunction with this exhibition Sunday Sessions presents Anne Imhof, DEALon Saturday January 17 and Sunday January 18.